ro(blog)non

I find myself with a little less than an hour to spare as I wait for Riann to be finished her gymnastic training. So I wander over to the mall to grab, what else? A coffee. Once in hand I join the flow of the human current moving throughout the mall. I read the eddies and counter-currents like an expert whitewater kayaker, finding calm sections where I can stop and rest, or look at something interesting in a window, or to people watch and see some human drama being played out in this most unlikely of places.

My senses were suddenly heightened, my spidey-sense tingled, as I saw a commotion on the opposite side, where the current flowed away from me. I quickly maneuvered over to the centre where more often than not I could find a peaceful place to avoid being jostled into motion. As I reached shore, a mighty noise erupted from the direction of the commotion. Unmistakably the sound of a child, either that or a jet taking off, rising in pitch as they gathered momentum. Did I really want to see this? Off to my left I saw the cause of the noise, a young boy of about four stood, hands clenched, red-faced, looking to the sky, with his mouth locked open in a terrific scream. Laying at his feet, it’s bottom also pointing to toward the sky, was an ice cream cone, standing like a grave marker upon a quickly growing corpse of liquid ice cream. Without interruption the flow of the human river has diverted around the scene with minimal effect. Standing beside the boy is his father, purchases in hand, the look of quiet desperation on his face. How will he respond, I wonder? Will he be angry? Will he just pick him up and whisk him away from the embarrassment he feels as rubber-neckers turn to see the carnage on the floor, wondering if anyone was hurt. Finding a vacant bench nearby he deposits his bags there and turns to the boy. In one movement he moves low, kneeling and turning the boy so that they might embrace. He holds his boy, his little chest heaving with sobs, almost like he is drawing off the sorrow into himself. In this place of comfort and protection the boy’s sobs slow their rhythm and intensity. After a moment the father moves the boy away so that he may see his face, their faces now only inches away and wipes his drenched cheeks. He speaks and lifts the boy’s now down-turned eyes. In a moment, amidst the chaos of a mall only days weeks before Christmas, standing strong against the flow of people, despite the stares of onlookers, their eyes lock on one another. The father smiles at his son. Whatever may have happened suddenly seems lost as the boy looks to daddy to make his world right. I read his lips, and make out the words, “I will buy you another one.” A promise. A promise that is as good as its fulfillment to the trusting child. Suddenly the source of his sorrow has left the boy’s memory for daddy’s promise of changing the future to make things right. A broad smile erupts on the boy’s face, his broken heart mended. He is happy because his circumstances have will change for the better. But long after the ice cream and the happiness it brings is gone he will experience joy at having a father who cares, who responds, who can make things right.

Out of nowhere a pimply-faced security guard appears and surveys the scene, the father stands and nods that everything is alright. The guard radios for back-up, who turns out to be a Filipino lady with a mop. Gathering his bags in one hand and tightly holding his son’s hand in the other, the two cross over the median and merge into the flow. In moments they are gone, off to make good dad’s promise. I smile, I have just had the privilege to witness a profoundly joyful, yet simple event.

How often do I feel like the little boy screaming at the world as it surges by me without any concern for my cries? Crying out in my grief for the things I have lost? Choosing to focus on nothing but my loss? Other times I focus on the loss that others experience. Screaming all that is wrong and unjust in the world, at the inhumanity of the powers that be. We have all felt that way at times, I am sure. We throw our temper tantrums, shaking our fists at the sky, asking “Why?” And then exasperated our arms fall to our sides and we wonder aloud, “Will it ever change?” Like that father in the mall, our heavenly Father came down to us, to make things right. He has wrapped his loving arms around us, interrupting our focus and held us until the sobs ebb away. He has looked us directly in the eye and promised that it will not always be as it has been. “Let’s go make it right, shall we?” he takes us by the hand and asks us, as if somehow we will have something to do with it.

The past cannot be changed, nor more than the ice cream magically lifted off the floor and refrozen in place on the cone. But the future has yet to be created. And is at that point that we have a choice, don’t we? We can linger in the past and miss being a part of the future, or we can embrace the future, preventing the past from happening again. Kneeling before us, the heavenly Father has spoken to us through people like Isaiah to describe to us a future where there will be no more pain and sorrow. John writes in the seventh chapter of his Revelation, “¹⁶They will never again be hungry or thirsty, and they will be fully protected from the scorching noontime heat. ¹⁷For the Lamb who stands in front of the throne will be their Shepherd. He will lead them to the springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe away all their tears.” One day there will be no more sorrow. And the defining moment for all this? When Jesus, God’s own Son, said “it is finished” as he hung upon the cross. In that moment Christ turned sorrow inside out and found joy.

This is what Advent is all about. About the future, God’s future, breaking in upon us now. About us not only waiting for it to come, but acting on it. Living in the present in light of the new future that God has promised. I am not talking about acting as if we were all playing harps in heaven. Nor am I talking so much about our individual destinies, as much as acting in ways that brings about the future reality God has for the world. Kingdom-living we might call it. Despite our circumstances. Despite what we read in the headlines. Or what we experience in our own lives. Not that we should deny our grief and emotions, but that we choose not to allow those to govern how we respond. Rather we choose joy. We can’t choose happiness, for happiness is dependant on our circumstances. Happiness is dependent on our environment. It can’t exist unless we’re experiencing good circumstances in our life: things that “make” us happy, like success, prosperity, good health, a good marriage and family, maybe popularity. I’m sure you can think of the things that make you happy. And there’s nothing basically wrong with them. Happiness is, though, a dependent feeling. It’s conditional upon the presence of certain good things or the absence of pain and hurt.

It’s also transient. It comes and goes. A grandparent explained it this way: “I’m happy when I get to snuggle with my young grandchildren. After the snuggling is over, the happiness fades away. But I am always joyful that I have grandchildren, whether I am in their immediate proximity or not.”

That’s because joy, unlike happiness, is an attitude, not just an emotion. The ‘secret’ to joy, and rejoicing, if it really is a secret at all, is not to obsess about the circumstances of our life. About the ice cream on the floor. Rather, look to Christ and what he has done for you and in you and through you.

Joy can be unaffected by our life’s circumstances – sometimes, it’s present despite our life’s circumstances! – even in defiance of them.

If we were to live that way, choosing joy, we would certainly live prophetically. We would be like John the Baptizer pointing to someone greater than us who is coming. A voice crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare a straight pathway for the Lord’s coming!”

Advent is about the spirituality of emptiness, of enough-ness, of stripped-down fullness of soul. Advent points to the essentials of life; commercial Christmas points to its superfluities.

The two great liturgical seasons of the church year, Advent and Lent, are about very different things. Advent is not "a little Lent." Advent is not a penitential period. Advent comes to trigger consciousness, not to provoke our consciences.

The Talmud teaches that every person should wear a jacket with two pockets. In the one pocket, the rabbis say, there should be a note that reads, "I am a worm and not completely human." And in the second pocket, the rabbis say, the note must read, "For me the universe was made."

The story is clear: The function of Lent is to remind us who we are--and who we are not. The function of Advent, on the other hand, is to remind us who God is and who we are meant to be, as well. Advent is about the riches of emptiness.

~ Joan Chittister

Like anyone I struggle to be content while living surrounded by the massive engine of commercialism. It is so pervasive and what bothers me most is trying to protect my kids from the mentality that 'things' are the ticket to fulfilment. None of them would say that, but the opposite reveals that the absence of particular things is the road to misery (at least temporarily). We live in a community where no one does without. There will hundreds of Wii's and PS3's to count in the homes of my kids' classmates after Christmas, I am sure.

How are we to live in a counter-cultural way when our frame of reference is the culture around us? How can we possibly show an alternative to the madness of stuff that permeates our whole Western world?

I think this is partly why communities of believers are necessary. Faith communities offer the potential for creating parallel cultures, ones that simultaneously critique the larger culture by their very existence and construct positive alternatives at the same time. (Conversely, its why churches that have been assimilated by the larger culture are so tragic.) This is why joining (and I am not talking about membership here as much as finding yourself 'at one' with others) a faith community is so important. And particularly why the Church Year and specifically Advent are important as we find ourselves gently nudged in the direction of ordering our life around a different set of presuppositions.

Church may not be uplifting and profoundly meaningful at all times on the surface, but in participating with others through gathering together and turning our attention toward the One who is other than ourselves, we subtly and consistently subvert the natural inclinations of our heart to follow the madding crowd.

Merry Christmas and a subversive Advent to you!

"When a community is healthy, it acts like a magnet. Young people commit themselves, visitors are happy to come there. When a community starts to be frighted of welcoming visitors, when it starts to lay down so many restrictions . . . these are bad signs. The health of a community can be measured by the quality of its welcome to the unexpected visitor, by the joy and simplicity of relationships between its members, by its creativity in response to the cry of the poor. An inward looking community will die of suffocation."

Jean Vanier, founder of l'Arche, from Community and Growth

This has been a principle which I have followed since I can remember. What do you think?

"I am convinced that personal pastoral ambition, and a pastoral ethic centered around productivity and success is brutal to our souls and destructive to the souls of the people we lead. I believe there is a better way. But it requires us to walk right into the messiness of our own ambitious hearts, ready to die to those ambitions. We must become skilled at detecting the odor of personal ambition, then flee from it as if the church's future depends on it. For I believe it does." -Kent Carlson, click here for the article

There is a part of me that wants to achieve great things for God. At least I think its for God. To be honest, I am not sure if that is God's leading or my middle-aged, male sense of "I've got to build something quick so that I leave a legacy, something that says 'I was here'. " Have you ever met a pastor that wanted to grow a small church?

It has been too long since I blogged, my apologies friends. For the past week or two I have been wrestling with anger and I have been afraid to write something that was untruthful and regrettable. I said before that I was glad that the church I had applied to had hired someone else, and that is true. But in an effort to move on I neglected a deep part of me that was hurt. I shared it in a limited way with close friends and Jana, but I had no idea how deep it went. The anger stems from a profound disappointment. I am disappointed that things did not work out as anticipated, more because I believed that I was not just answering an ad, but that God had directed me to this church. So what am I to do with that now? Was I that wrong? Was the lead pastor wrong in concluding the same thing? Was Jana wrong in see these things line up? It really doesn’t matter, since what is done, is done. But what this does do is fosters a scepticism about how I am to discern God’s leading.

As if that weren’t enough to process, what intensifies my confusion was that I am also disappointed in the way I was treated by this church. They hardened sceptics out there will be quick to denigrate the church as being cruel at the best of times, but I am still hopeful enough to think that the way people are treated in the church should be different than outside the church by virtue of the fact that this is the very means of our testimony of God’s present reality living with us. Without getting into detail the I believe that the committee failed to see me as a person, but more as a human resource that may or may not fit into their organization. Essentially what it made me feel was dehumanized. That I was just a resume, not a person with a family who is doing his best to honour others in the process. (I am frustrated with myself for allowing this to happen as well. I won’t be a ‘victim’ in this way again.)

I realized that I could not move on until I deal with this hurt and the anger that emanates from it. Over the past week I have wrestled with these demons and yesterday I finally met with the lead pastor to let him know what I have been feeling, giving him the opportunity to respond. I was able to speak my heart, without accusation but owning the emotions. I was satisfied with that. I did not expect anything further, although an apology would be a bonus. He listened intently to my disappointment and immediately entered into it with me. He shared how he was bewildered by what had transpired and hurt himself because he too had interpreted God’s will to be drawing us together. Furthermore, he apologized profusely on behalf of himself and the church for the pain the process had caused. He admitted that they had dropped the ball. Furthermore, he had already passed my name on to three other churches that were looking and was going to call an area minister when he got back to the office (which he did). When the coffee was done, we parted friends. My hope was restored and I am ready to move on.

This is the way the church is supposed to function. It not that we don’t make mistakes, in fact the Bible is adamant that God’s people will make mistakes. That is why the sacrificial system was established in Israel and forgiveness becomes such a dominant issue with the New Testament people of God. It is how we deal with one another in the midst of our humanity that will show us to be truly followers of a different way, or followers of the old way which leads to anger and bitterness, resentment and denigration. And it is this alternative way of living that will best demonstrate to others that God is a present reality living among us.

“I once spoke with a woman who was doing research on the “theory of leadership” at Hewlett-Packard. She had arranged an interview with David Packard, one of the company’s founders. He was quite old, a revered figure in the company. She said to him, “I am doing a study on leadership, and we all want to know what your theory of leadership is.” She said he looked at her and didn’t say anything. She thought, “Well, you know, maybe his hearing aid isn’t quite working.. I’ll try again.” She tried a little differently. “We all know you have deep convictions about leadership that have inspired thousands and thousands of people. What is your theory about the essence of leadership?” And she said he cocked his head and looked at her. Finally he said, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t think I have any theory of leadership. Bill Hewlett (his good friend and co-founder) and I just always did the things we loved to do, and we were so happy that people wanted to join us.” Notice the difference in the spirit of that comment from the one that says, “We’ve got the vision, now we’ve got to go and enroll people in the vision.”

- Peter Senge, excerpted from Servant Leadership (25th Anniversary Edition) A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, Essays by Robert Greenleaf and Larry Spears, 1991, Paulist Press Inc.

I encountered this quote on the Next Reformation blog and it reminded me of part of the struggle I have with speaking to people about what I can offer to a church. I believe I am a leader. Ask anyone who has spent time with me, I tend to offer to lead in any given situation, usually not from a position of power, but simply because I know that I can and I know how awful things go without someone helping guide the process. But if I am asked what my theory of leadership is, like I was asked in a recent interview for a pastoral position, I am at a loss for words. I never studied leadership. I have read a few books that have confused me because I am no where near as technocratic about leadership as many business execs. Many people admire these business leader types because they seem to have nailed Jello to the wall. They have synthesized leadership into 7 habits or 10 lessons or whatever. Its almost as if they are trying to franchise a brand of leadership to the masses. Come to think of it, maybe they are just trying to get published.

From all the books I have read I don't think any of them have made me a better leader. Attempting to lead has. Watching someone else lead has. Learning to love has. Watching Jesus has.

In my interview I was asked who were my leadership gurus. I answered that I thought too much of business ideology has been brought into the church and has compromised our understanding about leadership. I then answered that Mother Theresa and Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche, were people who I admired for their examples of leadership. From the glassy look on the questioner's face I could tell that didn't win me any points.

It's symbolic of something... over the past 24 hours I developed a blocked tear duct.

I am not sure what it means. I know that I am struggling to stay positive. I know I am dealing with feeling like I have been discarded by God on the refuse heap of pastoral wannabees. As I talked with God this morning I told him that I am what I am, and if he wants to use me this is what he gets. That I thought he understood that and accepted me as I was. And if not, he needs to let me go. Set me free from the curse of caring too much for the church and kingdom to want to put myself and my family through this. Perhaps I am too angry with God to cry, even though tears linger in the deep corners of my eyes most of the past several days. (Please don't tell anyone that I struggle like this, it makes for a rather stilted interview with a search committee.)

Sometimes, I just wish God would throw me a bone.

People ask me daily what I am doing. I feel like such a loser every time because as I recite the memorized lines of waiting on God to reveal the next steps, I secretly twinge a little inside as I wonder if God is really working behind the scenes. Maybe he has given up on me? Who wouldn't think about such things? An android maybe. Aren't the days of pretending that we have it all together over? I certainly don't. It's interesting how people tell me that they like a pastor who is vulnerable, yet when the wheels come off the cart, they still panic. Omigosh, there's a rip in the Superman suit. If you have looked at the job descriptions I have looked at, Superman pales in comparison to what many churches are looking for. "I said give me vulnerability, but I want testimony of what you went through, not what you are going through. Tell me about the pain after you have been healed, not while you are in midst of it." And we wonder why churches are dysfunctional. Can't our leaders admit their own struggles without questioning their ability to lead? It bears repeating, the church seems to be the only place where we shoot our wounded. Anybody want to start a church where "come as you are" refers to more than just wearing jeans? Admit to a struggle and everyone gathers around you like you are some kind of diseased person in need of healing, offering up platitudes like they were some kind of new antibiotic. Like struggle is abnormal to the human condition and needs to be eradicated, like polio. The truth is that no one really knows what to say. Still I understand their need for hope, for a person in crisis doesn't give you hope, just fear. Their religious platitudes speak more of their need to fill the silence and calm their own fears, than ministering to someone in need.

I was reading the Psalms today and they are filled with references to the psalmist crying out. If the Christian life is such a prosperous bed of roses, what is all the crying about?

Did God block it to tell me to stop being such a whiner? Maybe he is giving me a break from tearing up? Maybe its an encouragement to cry more to dislodge whatever it is that blocks a tear duct. Then again, maybe it doesn't mean anything, maybe its just a blocked tear duct.

Every day isn't as black as this. Last week was great. But today, not so much. My duct is blocked.

I am very excited as Jana and I have tickets to hear Bruce Cockburn tonight (www.cockburnproject.net). He remains one of the finest musicians I have ever heard and a unwitting ally in God's shaping of my social consciousness. In the New Testament Paul introduces the notion of 'principalities and powers'. These are the systems that shape and form us, some of which are good, others not so much. The Kingdom of God is that reality when the principalities and powers are replaced with God's rule. Unfortunately, for much too long certain streams within the evangelical church have focussed on personal morality to the exclusion of public morality. There have been times when one's spiritual standing was in question if one smoked, danced, or did any one of a litany of things deemed unChristian. A public morality insists on coming against those principalities and powers that seek to de-humanize and destroy. It is the cry of Jesus' prayer that "thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." Meanwhile the church and its members were complicit in their participation of economic systems that oppressed the poor, raped the earth, and terrorized the Third World. How is it that we could be so blind?

Cockburn, who is himself a Christian, is ever the prophet calling us to face these inconsistencies in our life and challenging the principalities and powers that wreak havoc upon the earth. His encouragement is the same as Paul's. We should be governed by the ethic or rule of love. This is how we overthrow the principalities and powers that need to be replaced by the rule of God. Love for our neighbour, for the homeless person, for the child labourer, for creation. If we don't stand up for those who are not able to stand themselves, who will?

So all you stumblers who believe love rules
Believe love rules
Believe love rules
Come all you stumblers who believe love rules
Stand up and let it shine
Stand up and let it shine

- from the song Mystery on his newest album Life Short Call Now.

Jana and I had the opportunity to hear Tony Campolo (www.tonycampolo.org) last night at a fundraiser for Community Justice Ministries, a branch of the Mennonite Central Committee in Alberta, and a minstry with which I volunteer. (The bulk of their work is in the area of Restorative Justice;see http://www.mcc.org/alberta/programs/cjm.html.) I remember hearing Tony in the late 80’s in Edmonton and realized how God has been shaping my life over the years through pioneers and prophets like Tony. Tony is a very passionate man with a mission to mobilize people to serve God through serving others, in many ways he fanned the missional flame in my heart last night as he did almost 20 years ago.

In the book I am reading by Webber, the Younger Evangelicals, he gives a great overview of the history of evangelicalism in the past century. It reminded me a little of the work of Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, in how he traces the interplay between the church and culture in America. How, even though they both embraced it, theological conservatives and liberals alike reacted to modernism in very different ways. Part of Webber’s analysis is surrounding fundamentalism’s neglect of social action (in favour of evangelism) and liberalism’s embrace of it (as the means of spreading love). What I and many of the generations that have wrestled with this false dichotomy have discovered in recent years is just how inseparable social action and evangelism are. The new operative buzz word for us being ‘missional.’

This term came to the fore in the 90’s as a group of academics picked up the gauntlet thrown down by Lesslie Newbigin, particularly in the late 80’s in his books Foolishness to the Greeks and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (http://www.newbigin.net/general/biography.cfm ), to develop a decidedly Western missiology or a theology of mission for the Western world. Newbigin’s observations were that the Western church was oblivious to the changes that had occurred in the larger culture and needed to realize that Christendom was dead and the Western church now existed in a post-Christian world. Missionaries were needed here as much as in the ‘dark continents’.

Those academics began a movement spearheaded by an organization called The Gospel and Our Culture Network (www.gocn.org) who wrestled with the implications of this. This intellectual discussion became fodder for the growing numbers of evangelicals who were finding their churches decidedly irrelevant to the world they were living in, having isolated themselves from the ‘evil world’, and so emerged a conversation about the implications of intentionally engaging culture to change it with and for the sake of the Gospel. Books such as The Missional Church and The Church Between Gospel and Culture continue to be provocative. Thiswas in vast contradiction to the culture wars and dominance of the religious right in the States, and more in keeping with the message Tony Campolo and other prophets were challenging us to.

It is interesting to trace the influences in your life and see how God has been shaping you. How he created me with a certain ‘bent’ and then watch as people like Tony and others have come along and watered it. Thanks be to God.

P.S. Some people asked me about my use of the term ‘emerging church’ last post and I have directed them to this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_church. Where would we be without Wikipedia?

Last night I received a phone call from the church I had applied at to tell me what I already knew. God did not want me at that church. It was a mixture of relief with the sudden onset of confusion and worry. I find my home in the “emerging church” and feel called to serve God in it, but I am also looking to work to support my family. I have been networking with others and will be sending my resume out to others today, but my fear/temptation is that while there might be a place for someone like me, it may not exist yet (i.e. I or someone else needs to create it) or it is up to me to find it amidst the dense underbrush of ministry. [Lord, help me.]

I began reading a book yesterday by Robert Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the challenges of the new world. (Webber is a worship theologian who propounds the concept of ancient-future worship.) He describes the changes in the leadership paradigm in the evangelical church over the past century. Let me quote him for you, “Right now these two paradigms – the older evangelicalism built around twentieth-century culture and the evangelicalism being formed around the twenty-first century – are in conflict. This clash is birthing a new set of leaders – the younger evangelicals.” What Webber is describing is the place where I live. It is a place of transition and conflict, of uncertainty and new birth (which if you haven’t noticed is only beautiful in what is brought into the world at the end). Like the prodigal son I returned to seek to be faithful to what God is calling me to and will continue to do so. However I must admit that I am scared and feel a tremendous amount of responsibility for the burden this places on my wife. It is why I fled this call for the past two years, only to give in to God’s relentless pursuit of me. I believe that I am needed and that he wants to use me, but the toll this is taking on me and my family is at times seems unbearable.

I do not believe that I am alone in this journey. There are many others who are also lost in the dense undergrowth. If you are the kind of person that prays, ask God to give us faith that he will guide us. Ask him to give us patience to wait for him and feet that are ready to go to where we need to go. Ask him for encouragement that we may be supported in this part of the journey. Ask him for community while we wait. And finally thank him for he has been faithful to us in the past.

rob